


Gentle

by mortalitasi



Series: bones and violets [2]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, F/M, Family, Friendship, Gen, General, Hurt/Comfort, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-24
Updated: 2015-02-24
Packaged: 2018-03-14 22:33:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3427973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mortalitasi/pseuds/mortalitasi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cole thought that humans that were more human than him knew what it meant to be human. Cole was wrong. And he's actually not certain he minds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gentle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [goatrocket](https://archiveofourown.org/users/goatrocket/gifts).



> !!!! second installment for bb Grace and Cole is HERE. you should probably read the first one ("Her Name Is True") to get a good handle on their relationship, blablabla, you don't HAVE to but you prolly should. this is unedited because it is 6 AM, i am depressed as all fuck, and i needed the therapeutic powers of fluff to heal me. keep in mind that the order of these scenes is not necessarily linear blah blah blah u kno the drill
> 
> hope you enjoy!

 

“A BLESSED THING IT IS FOR ANY MAN OR WOMAN TO HAVE A FRIEND,   
ONE HUMAN SOUL WHOM WE CAN TRUST UTTERLY, WHO KNOWS THE BEST  
AND WORST OF US, AND WHO LOVES US IN SPITE OF ALL OUR FAULTS."

 

— ** Charles Kingsley ** , died January 23 rd , 1875

 

 

…

 

 

 

The White Spire is deserted.

Cole does not know if this is the way they—whoever they are—intended it to be, but as it stands now, what _is_ standing of it, anyway, is full of ghosts and empty spaces, echoes upon echoes, layering on each other like the too many paper-thin stacks of pastry in those bizarre Orlesian sweets Dorian likes so much. He remembers it as it used to be, not bursting with mages, but the kind of quiet that assures you something is being lived in—that there's something beyond the dark where the shadows of the corridors cross over. There were people here, once, scared and scuttling, their minds starved, their wills stretched, but they were _people._ Now there is nothing. Nothing is frightening.  
  
Not a lot of anything or anyone alive knows the meaning of true darkness. The ones in the places called the alienages, they know—and so do the ones living under bridges, the hollow-eyed survivors sitting next to the smoking ashes of what used to be their houses in the Hinterlands, dazed and confused, praying for it to be over soon, _please let it be over._ Cole is well-acquainted with the true dark, the thick, stodgy thing that clings to you as surely as if it were solid, slow and sucking, a kind of quicksand you can't escape. He sat in the true dark beside the first Cole, clutching the boy's bony hand in his own, an arm he'd willed into existence, five fingers and five nails, all white and fair hair and blue veins.  
  
It'd been the only thing Cole—the first one—the only thing he had inside that cell. True dark means no one comes for you. True dark means you sit in the gloom, imagining what would happen if the cell door opened _right now_ and the templars burst back in, or if Bunny ran to you across the hallway and asked you to put the flowers in her hair, but just the yellow ones. She never really liked red. But yellow was her favorite.  
  
There had been no light, no food, no water. Not even a tattered excuse for a bedroll, a proud feature some of the other empty cells boasted. First Cole had stared longingly at one of them from behind the bars of the small grille at the top of the strong wooden door at the entrance—that had been when he'd had the energy to stand, or to cry. That's how Cole... that's how Second Cole had heard him. At the beginning it'd been a weak, wispy thread of fear.  
  
“What if they leave me here? What if they've forgotten about me? I'm hungry. I hurt. _I hurt_ .”  
  
Then came the panic, fluttering tight like little bird wings, feathers flared, but with nowhere to go, beating up against the unforgiving walls and the door, wrists pounding into the wood until he bloodied them. He fell and bit his tongue when he tried pulling against the manacle that bound him at the ankle, and when it strained too far he lost his balance. He laid there for hours, face pressed into the cobbles, weeping into the stones, hating himself for everything—for being forgotten, for being small, for failing Bunny, for failing Mother, for not being able to _fix it all_ , for being _afraid_ .  
  
“Men don't frighten, boy!” Father had bellowed at him one day after almost thirty minutes of the belt. “Men _don't cry_ !”  
  
And yet he couldn't stop. Failure.  
  
At some point the hunger had gnawed away what little was left on him. By the time he'd started slipping away, he'd been thin enough to slide out of the shackles, but he hadn't cared. His breath, so faint and so soft, had stirred the hair covering his face, still fine and light despite so many days' worth of filth; and his hand, jagged and emaciated, had twitched, thumb over index, and a sigh had come to him from deep inside the sunken cavity of his chest. Cole had leaned in, the effort leaving him trembling, and pressed the chapped mess of his lips just slightly to his first—and last—friend's knuckles.  
  
Then, smiling, just a bit, head nodding, he'd spoken, barely able to articulate, though he didn't need to. His friend could hear beyond the voice and into the feeling, and in that final moment, it had been comforting.  
  
“Thank you.”  
  
“We don't have to do this if you don't want to,” Grace says, careful, always so careful—with him and with everyone. It's what makes her Grace.  
  
“It's alright,” he assures her, and starts on the steep stairs downward, into the bowels of the White Spire's dungeons, where everything ended, and where everything began.  
  
She follows after him, footsteps almost silent, and they descend. No windows, no way out. First Cole had been half-delirious when the templars had dragged him over this staircase, stumbling every other step and apologizing until one of them had beaten him viciously over the skull and hissed at him to “Shut it, _pissbaby_ .” He knows because Cole remembered that, and it'd stood out against the boy's memories like the last ember to die amidst the grey remains of a burned-out fire. It had reminded him of his father, angry, angry, seldom happy, and so eager to hurt. A bad person.  
  
He walks past every cell, not even looking at them or inside. He will recognize it when he sees it. Grace patters in his wake, the draw of her breath nervous. This must seem to her like the advent of every nightmare she's ever had—and she would be right. It was a nightmare. A muted, suffocating, smothering nightmare that went unnoticed and unheeded. First Cole had lived in terror all his life, and the muddled snaps of it had bled through their connection: fingers broken, bruised, bleeding, feet sore, shoes too small, no breakfast, Bunny soiled her bed again, Father will be upset, don't hide the ale, it just makes it worse, do not weep, _do not weep_ .  
  
The door to the tiny room is ajar, as though someone just left at a moment's notice. He hesitates in reaching out to it, but then he hears Grace come to a stop, feels faint warmth of her at his back through his shirt, and her presence gives him courage. _You can't hurt me_ .  
  
He stares at the abandoned cell, at the rusted shackles and the chipped stone that First Cole had tried to dig out of the ground to end himself with, but he'd wanted to live, to live, even though he was down here and he knew, somehow, that there would be no rescue. There never was. He turns, having had his fill of the sight, and sees the drawn disgust and shame and horror on Grace's face, in the crease of her brow and the pinch of her mouth.  
  
“They took him. Hid him,” he says in a hoarse voice. “But I can tell... I know where.”  
  
She has nothing to add as he starts to trace his hands along the wall, tilting his head while he listens.  
  
Grace had been the one to suggest Val Royeaux—to get away from the Inquisition and the duties for some time, short as it may be, and he'd said, “I'd like that,” and she'd started to prepare for it to become a reality. He likes the markets of Orlais better than the houses of the people that call themselves noble. Though there is no bare face even at the docks, the intent there is realer, more admirable, more easily understood than that of, say, the man in a gilt doublet who stands around as if some very important object were to drop on him at any minute, who speaks in triple-quadruple-infinite-meanings and laughs despite thinking the joke was exceedingly tasteless.  
  
On the third day, he'd asked her, because the niggling curiosity had won him over, asked her if they could stop and visit and see where it had all gone, what it looked like after two years—and she'd agreed. The ride out to the White Spire wasn't long. Travel moves faster in early spring, and no one had been heading in the same direction as they. He hears Vivienne plans to have the Spire restored after her coronation, and he wouldn't have chanced coming back after that happened.  
  
The trail leads them from the dungeons to the outside again, and though the midday light stings their eyes, they are glad to be out of the prison. Pockets of Val Royeaux are green enough to pass as countryside, and though the place around the Spire is as populated and stony as a place can get, around the tower there are sizable courtyards, filled with groves of tall, sighing trees, the kind of which one doesn't mind walking beneath. Cole moves between the trunks without a sound, more of a ghost now than he has been in the last three years. He only realizes he has no idea if Grace is keeping up when he finally comes to a stop at the edge of a small clearing hemmed in by rows of oak and pine.  
  
Her hair has somehow managed to more or less wrangle itself free of her headband, resting on her shoulders in great curls like the twist of the roots gnarling the ground at their feet. She blinks at the open space before them, her hooded eyes attentive and observant. The dappled light coming through the canopy of leaves drowns out the brown in them, leaving just the gold, bright, beautiful, against the dark brush of her lashes.  
  
“Here?” she says quietly, and he nods, starting off into the clearing.  
  
He doesn't really know what he's looking for until he sees it—not very obvious, but a displacement of earth. The grass here is shorter and stubbier than the rest around it, though no less robust, and next to the toe of Cole's left boot is a clump of dirt too uneven to be natural. It's been overgrown, somewhat, so it's been sitting here for a while, and he holds his breath as he leans down to brush the top layer of dust away from the protrusion. That comes away easily, but the rest, he has to dig out—he's ruining his gloves in doing so, probably.  
  
Grace's breath catches upon seeing what he's uncovered.  
  
Stubs, knuckles, wrist, joint, bleached bone, buried, befouled... forgotten.  
  
His lips pinch together. “Not deep. Hasty. Hurry. _Let's get rid of it._ ”  
  
“I'm sorry,” Grace says. There's so much emotion crammed into those two words alone that hearing them almost hurts.  
  
“You shouldn't be. It's not your fault. It was theirs.”  
  
She doesn't add anything else as he stretches out an arm and lines up the edges of his hand with those of the skeletal thing sticking out of the ground.  
  
“We have to fix it,” Cole says suddenly, and comes to his feet in one motion.  
  
Grace steps toward him. “I can. Stand aside, a bit.”  
  
He does as he's told and witnesses as she concentrates, brows furrowing, mouth pulling at the corners. A breeze he can't feel makes the long tails of her coat flutter around her legs, causes her dress-tunic to billow. There's a crack, above the hum of gathering magic, and the spot where the sad crumple of bones sits sinks below the level of the rest of the soil. With a flick of her fingers, the newly-churned earth piles over it, looking like more of a proper grave than the guilt-fevered templars were ever able to give the boy in the ground. He should have lived, learned, lasted past the tortures of Father and the nightmare in the cupboard, but he didn't. The world is not a fair place, and only because the people who could make it so do not try.  
  
Cole bends again, and wordlessly begins to collect rocks to pile at the topmost end of the grave. They cannot conjure a headstone, so this will have to do. When the task is done, he wipes his gloves down on his trousers. Grace is rooting through one of her pouches, looking for something, but for once he has no eyes for her. She finds what she's seeking—there's a rustle of brown parchment, the kind she uses for binding her herbs, and then he sees that she's holding a bushel of crystal grace. He doesn't remember her picking it. She must have brought it along in anticipation. The thought makes his heart squeeze in his chest, but it's not an altogether unpleasant feeling. She _cares_ .  
  
“One last thing,” she murmurs, and then shuts her eyes.  
  
Again comes the hum of magic, the buzz of bunching mana—and ice, sweet, sharp, splendid, and transparent, begins creeping up from the flowers' stems to the leaves. It reaches the rosehips, climbing higher, glittering like a coat of molten diamond. When at last it halts its conquest, the bushel gleams, glassy and glorious. Grace looks at it with pride, and he thumbs at one of the leaves. It's not wet, or cold, just hard—and clear. Like crystal.  
  
She smiles a small smile, and then turns to nestle the point of the bushel between the two largest rocks at the grave's head. It stays there, unbent by the wind, winking as a jewel would.  
  
“Those will last longer than usual,” she says, facing forward. “I hope.”  
  
He watches the sun catch on the glimmering flowers, and the warm wash of tears blurs his vision. She starts when she feels the touch of his hand over hers, but she turns her own palm outward and laces her fingers through his, safe, secure, strong, striking—soft. His grip grows and his back straightens. She understands.  
  
The shadows dance on the forest floor. The trees whisper, the wind moves their branches, the grass sways. He is at peace.  
  
They don't move for a long time.

 

 

…

 

 

 

Cassandra often forgets that the Inquisitor is only a year or two shy of the age when she was first made the Right Hand of the Divine.  
  
Is duty always something that must be thrust on someone so young? The weight of it either shapes you or breaks you. In the beginning, she was certain the Inquisitor would be among the ranks of the ones who do the latter—Grace was frightened, tiny, with the voice that could barely fill a thimble with sound, and endlessly _clumsy_ . Butterfingered. Tongue-tied. Leg-locked. A single grumbled complaint from Cullen would turn her stiff with nerves. She always hovered just out of the reach of anyone near, like a moth circling a candle's flame.  
  
She'd weighed next to nothing the night that they'd found her slumped amidst the snowdrifts, when Cassandra had lifted her from the ground and held her close, feeling the chill of her body even through the thick plates of armor separating them both. Upon being lowered into the cot Mother Giselle had prepared for her, she'd, in her unconsciousness, reached out and clung to Cassandra's sleeve, her bloodless fingers curling there like vises.  
  
_How could I ever have been furious at her_ ? Cassandra had asked herself, looking down at the Inquisitor who was lying there, all traces of lip-staining paint and kohl wiped from her face by the force of the howling, wet wind and the gusts of snow-laced air, truly _looking_ at her—her nose was a little too big for her face, her two front teeth endearingly small, ever so slightly crooked, and the mouth, twisted into an expression of faint discomfort, was strange, thin, hooked at the corners, the bow of its top lip dipped comically low, but pretty. Pretty, and belonging to a girl—a girl who'd only just begun to grow into a woman.  
  
_I must watch over her._  
  
At some point between Haven exploding, the Archdemon landing, and the Chantry's version of the advent of the world all but confirmed, Cassandra formed a habit of checking in on the Inquisitor when she least expects it—in her lab, in the library, when she's ready to go, before she sleeps (if she sleeps). Grace seems to believe that Cassandra doesn't notice the hours she keeps. It is a wrong belief.  
  
The Inquisitor's curious laboratory can be found in one of the vacant rooms between the commander's office and the topmost level of the tavern, whose lights and sound-level are almost always present, a beacon of solace in the night, a place to go when you can't sleep and the world inside your head does not quiet. It's a common affliction among soldiers, or those who work in the field—worries and anxiety, they affect even the most hardened of veterans. Cassandra can only imagine what the strain has done to Grace.  
  
The floor absorbs most of the sound she makes when she walks, methodical, strides long and even, the way she's been walking since she was just a girl. _You walk like a man_ , a second cousin to someone or other thrice removed had told her once in her childhood, and being who she was, little stone-faced Cassandra had simply lifted her priceless Orlesian doll high above her head and then brought it down squarely on the top of the other girl's skull. Uncle, even as engrossed in his books and corpses as he was, had disapproved of that, but she hadn't minded. The second cousin to someone or other thrice removed had never visited again.  
  
Cassandra opens the door to Grace's lab cautiously. Things are prone to exploding in here (and catching fire, or rocketing out of windows). It takes a few seconds for Cassandra's eyes to adjust to the dimness, and when they do she sees that the lanterns the Inquisitor keeps bright with magical flame are burning low. The odd flasks and beakers cast outlandish lights and shadows on the walls, leaping figures and globes of white, blue, green, and yellow.  
  
The Inquisitor herself is slumped over the desk she calls a workplace, the spindly fingers of her hands spread along the pages of the book—a ponderous, gargantuan tome on poisonous botany—she was reading when she fell forward in sleep.  
  
There's an innocence about the Inquisitor—something intangible and light, present most of the time, in things like a smile or a thank you, in the way she takes a book into her hands, the way she reverently smooths the fabric of her cloak down before clipping it on. Cassandra has seen it before in people deprived of any and all pleasures of life, some of the mages she's seen in the small Circles in smaller towns or cities where the Chant is more a code of fear than it is a herald of safety and comfort, places where people who were anything but the average require permission from ( _who_ ? Cassandra thinks, _their betters?_ ) others to go on existing.  
  
Grace possesses that quality. The bottomless kindness, the valuable idealism, the indefinable attribute that is common ground in all survivors. She has seen, but is happy, or she is trying to be. Perhaps it is the latter that matters more, in the end.  
  
Cassandra approaches the worktable quietly, looking around for anything that could serve as a blanket, wondering if the Inquisitor is going to spend the night here. It can be done, but it won't do any favors for the Inquisitor's back.  
  
_Listen to me, going on like a worried mother_ .  
  
“Stop.”  
  
Cassandra follows the order—out of instinct, more than anything, and then she realizes it came from the girl curled up against the desk.  
  
And again, but this time infinitely more pitiful, slurred with slumber: “Stop. Stop, please.”  
  
She gazes down at Grace, at the wrinkle that's formed between the Inquisitor's dark brows, and the contorted stretch of her features. It's an expression you would see on a crying child, and it rends Cassandra's heart in two. The flame in the glass lantern closest to them flickers wildly, guttering like a light in the face of a storm, though the air in the laboratory is peaceful, still, and there is no wind to speak of.  
  
“Mama—don't... _let him_ .”  
  
Now the flame flares high, anxious, burning with fervor and emotion, and Cassandra makes a decision.  
  
Grace's hair is fine and silky, much to Cassandra's surprise. She'd expected it to be wiry, coarse. Her fingers thread through the mass of strands gathered at Grace's shoulder, and immediately the dismay vanishes. Grace sighs, and it's a sound of relief. A tear streaks down her cheek, settles on the page of the book, seeping into the parchment and blurring the ink there.  
  
“Ada...”  
  
Vestalus hadn't been a tactile guardian—nothing about Uncle was attached or near. Everything was distant, cold, dead. In more ways than one. This isn't to say he didn't care. He did, and does, in his own way, but all the comfort, the talk, the embraces, those came from Anthony. Dear Anthony, who was always smiling and laughing and ready to put in a good word for everyone. Cassandra does not remember much of Mother and Father—at least, not as much as she'd like. She knows Mother loved sandalwood, and Father didn't shave often enough to keep the scratchy stubble at bay, and she knew an adequate amount of affection from them both, the better to contrast the bleak quietude of Uncle Vestalus' treatment.  
  
Anthony would stroke his fingers over her scalp when she woke from frightening dreams, screaming for Mother, weeping when she remembered they were far from the rambling manor by the sea that was no longer theirs, that they were instead in the forbidding, near-airless mansion where Uncle Vestalus lived, where she hated visiting, where it was always silent, so silent—like the grave.  
  
“One day, Cassie,” Anthony used to say, “you'll know how to help someone else, because of the dreams. You'll help, you will. Cry it out, Cassie. It'll pass. All things do. Remember that. It'll pass.”  
  
She moves her hand in a tiny circle, thumbing the curls away from Grace's face, and she knows she has made the correct choice when the Inquisitor stills and her breathing evens again.  
  
_You were right, Anthony. I helped._

 

 

…

 

 

 

 _Her favorite corner in the Circle's library smells like myrrh and wet stone, because Enchanter Fidelia is borderline-neurotic about having the floor clean, and there's almost always some poor templar initiate on their knees scrubbing the cobbles under her critical supervision._  
  
_Today, however, there is no initiate, and sharp-eyed Fidelia is nowhere to be seen, so Grace has the place all—mostly—to herself. She's drawn up next to the window, grimoire open across her lap, quill ready. She writes slowly, steadily, in the flowing script she learned to reproduce when she was just a little girl, and her tutors had her copy passages upon passages of the Chant to demonstrate she knew how to complete a sentence without lifting the nib of her quill from the parchment. She still does it, out of force of habit more than anything, though she's surprised even now when the tutor's ruler doesn't rap unforgivably across her knuckles when she stops mid-sentence._  
  
_She must put this recipe down before she forgets—the mixture was highly effective the last time she brewed it, which means it should be preserved. She's learned to not rely on her memory, as good as it is, because one never knows when one might need a written reference. It's a handy principle to live by, even if it leaves you with more sheaves of paper than you know what to do with. She tries not to think about last night, she does, truly, but at some point the blur of tears obscures her view of the grimoire, and she has to pause so she can rub at her eyes._  
  
“ _Grace?”_  
  
_The voice makes her fumble, coming dangerously close to losing her grip on the grimoire, though she prevails in the end and manages to stay seated as well as_ not _scattering her work everywhere._  
  
“ _Enchanter Lydia,” she blurts, blinking at her teacher._  
  
_Lydia has a way of materializing out of thin air—or she has a way of_ making it seem _like she_ can _materialize out of thin air. She walks as quietly as Grace. She's not a frightfully imposing figure, despite towering above many of the Circle's inhabitants. She's a tall woman who walks with a bit of a hunch, perhaps out of a subconscious need to put herself at equal level with the rest of the world, or perhaps because she simply has dreadful posture. There's a clear, solid quality to her surprisingly small voice; a small voice that reaches_ everywhere. _It reminds Grace of the feeling you get when you gaze through a looking glass and it distorts the world around you._  
  
“ _Yes, that's me,” Lydia says helpfully, her face breaking into one of her naturally brilliant grins._  
  
_There's something friendly about Enchanter Lydia's face—it could be the funnily-curved lips, or the smattering of freckles on her cheeks, or the accepting, all-encompassing amity with which Lydia looks upon everyone and everything. Her favorite pair of spectacles—tiny, half-moon, golden frames—sits welcomingly on the bridge of her upturned nose, never falling or sliding out of place. The glittering chain that ensures they keep hanging from Lydia's neck is long, crafted lovingly, and Grace has a hard time picturing Enchanter Lydia without it. It'd be like trying to imagine her minus the thick, sweeping braid of dark hair, always bound with colorful fabric, or in robes that weren't quilted, patched, and repaired a dozen times over. Impossible._  
  
“ _Hello?” Lydia says, blinking at Grace with her mismatched set of eyes. They're fascinating to look at—one blue, like the cornflowers that grow by the riverbanks in spring, and one brown, the color that the wood of the walnut tree takes on when it sits in the sun and the warmth wears away the rough edges of the timber._  
  
“ _Hello,” Grace answers faintly. “Is there something you need?”_  
  
“ _Something_ I _need? You're the one in need, poppet,” Lydia assures her, and then reaches up to brush away a few stray tears with the back of her fingers. “Tell old Lydia what it is and I'll try my best to fix it.”_  
  
_Grace sniffles, and presses a hand to her eyes. “No, no, it's alright. I'm alright. It's not your fault, or—I'll be okay.”_  
  
_Lydia pats at one of Grace's cheeks. “Oh, my dear, I have no doubt you will be. You're all strength and steel, even if you haven't realized it yet. I'm right, you'll see.”_  
  
“ _I'll take your word for it,” Grace says, her voice watery and unhappy._  
  
“ _Do these tears have anything to do with that thoughtless loudmouth roaming the halls last night?”_  
  
“ _I—no. I don't know. Maybe.”_  
  
“ _Let me tell you something about Ennis,” Lydia murmurs, in a volume so low it's practically conspiratorial. “Firstly—the girl is frightened, but too proud to show it. Fear breeds anger, too, after a point. Does this excuse what she was saying to the apprentices yesterday? No. In fact, in a way, this makes it worse. We should help each other, in our fear, instead of screaming about death and destruction. You shouldn't believe Ennis' ill-begotten ramblings anymore than you'd believe the idea that Fidelia prefers the library floors dirty.”_  
  
_Grace stares down at the dog-eared corner of her grimoire, so lovingly preserved and painstakingly maintained. She'd thought that upon coming to the Circle, they'd have seized it, or taken it from her, or burnt it, but all that happened was the templars passing it to First Enchanter Edie for a cursory inspection—and then she'd had it back. The First Enchanter had even commended her on the ingenuity of some of her recipes, and Grace had only fully understood the gravity of the compliment later on, when she'd learned that earning a favorable word from First Enchanter Edie was about as likely as the clouds in the sky raining Marcher bull-toads._  
  
“ _She said I'd never go anywhere,” Grace admits in a whisper. “Even—on good behavior.”_  
  
“ _Ever the optimist, that one,” Lydia says dryly. “You're a bright girl, nugget. You'll go far. Way past the walls of this Tower.”_  
  
_Grace wishes she could believe that. “How do you know?”_  
  
_Lydia smiles at her, cryptic and confident. “I just do. Ennis is smarting because her application for leave was rejected. That, my dear, tends to happen when you take it upon yourself to upstage Edie at her own alchemy course. Since you're far too sensible to attempt something as silly, I do think you're quite safe.”_  
  
_Just the mere thought of doing anything that would vaguely displease the First Enchanter is enough to make the flesh at the back of Grace's neck to crawl._  
  
“ _Your expression is proving me right,” Lydia laughs. “One last thing, and then I'll leave you be. I know it's difficult, being_ less _loud than the rest of them, even liking it here. There are rough times ahead for Circles across Thedas, but we mustn't let that divide us. The world has always disliked what it could not understand, and that is true for us all, mage or not. Never let the strangeness of a thing disallow you from knowing it. Only from knowledge can come an informed choice.”_  
  
“ _I'll try,” Grace says, but it doesn't sound as sure as she wanted it to. Lydia just smiles again._  
  
“ _One of the oldest members of our Circle had a saying she loved imparting upon anyone with half a brain,” the Enchanter goes on. She turns her eyes to the high arched ceiling above them, as if she's searching for an answer, or a sign, as if she can see something in the stones that Grace cannot. “Her name was Morena, and she passed away a year before you came here. She would have liked you.”_  
  
“ _I've heard the other Enchanters mention her.”_  
  
_Lydia nods. “_ Mobilus. Amatum. Somnus.”  
  
“ _That's Tevene,” Grace mutters._  
  
“ _So it is,” Lydia agrees. “Morena came south from Minrathous. I heard she left because she'd been on bad terms with her family—she had a distant relative in the members of the Order here, and after weeks of negotiation, she was admitted. This was years before my time. But she used to say that a lot, whenever her apprentices got surly and things seemed dire.”_  
  
“ _...What does it mean?”_

“ _'Move. Love. Sleep.' The three pillars of mortal existence, or so Morena said they were,” Lydia says, pushing up her spectacles with the edge of a knuckle. “She believed that every problem could be solved with one or a combination of them—and she would remind me of this every time I so much as expressed disapproval. Or tiredness. Or... I just talked.”_

“ _She sounds—fun,” Grace observes, for lack of a better word._

“ _Depends on your definition of fun,” Lydia says with a chuckle. “I thought she was full of rubbish, when I was younger, but young people tend to be very stupid—you're an exception, poppet. I've come think she was right. Keep it in mind, won't you?”_

“ _I will,” Grace promises, and the Senior Enchanter gives her another pat on the cheek, kind, more motherly than the woman who gave birth to Grace herself, who is dead and burned and gone._

“ _Good.”_

 

 

…

 

 

“What does this stand for?”

Grace doesn't look at Dorian, who is very interestedly poring over the open grimoire on the table behind her. “What does what stand for?”

“Some initials here,” he says, poking a finger at the point on the page before him. “'M.L.S.'”

Grace lightly shakes the beaker she's holding, watching the solution inside bleed from white to red to purple. Perfect. “Just something I can look at when I feel shabby. A reminder that not everything's as bad as it may seem sometimes.”

“And that's an answer that somehow is _not_ an answer at all,” Dorian remarks thoughtfully, moving his attention away from the book.

“Well, maybe if you didn't nose around like a curious mouse, I'd be more inclined toward unfailing honesty,” Grace says and laughs. The solution should be ready for transfer now. She gropes for an empty beaker and tips her target over the edge of the table before her reflexes kick in and she catches it by the spout, preventing what was sure to be a very nasty shattering of glass.

Dorian wrinkles his nose, the ends of his magnificent mustache curling. “A very _handsome_ mouse.”

“The handsomest. To someone. Certainly.”

“Pft! To many someones. One of the scullery maids is absolutely besotted with me, I'll have you know.”

“Poor girl,” Grace observes, but that just makes him laugh.

He tilts his head when she tips the contents of her first beaker into the second, taking care to lean away from the resulting fumes. “Would you kindly get the blinds...?”

“Done,” he declares upon throwing open the window.

“That was rather ostentatious,” Grace says with a smirk. “Can't even open a window properly, can we?”

“Things done without style are not worth doing,” he replies curtly, nodding. “What is that there supposed to do?”

Grace considers the solution with a critical eye. She's mostly satisfied with it, truth be told, but the real indicator of whether she succeeded or not will be during test runs. “If I'm lucky, leave a six meter wide crater in anything I throw it at.”

He physically recoils from her side, holding himself far away, hands behind his back as though _he's_ the one holding a potentially lethal liquid explosive. “And you're just sloshing it around like it's nothing?”

She snorts. “I haven't added the reactant yet, silly. It's harmless! ...Mostly.”

“You're a dear girl, a bright girl, and I love watching you work,” Dorian says as he edges around her, careful not to brush at the back of her tunic. “But—that will be my cue to leave. Being blown away in _this_ fashion is not something high on my list of priorities.”

“Suit yourself,” she says in a sing-song as he wrenches the door ajar and slips through it.

He waggles his fingers at her before he shuts it, _click-bam_ , a resounding thud of wood and metal. The doors in Skyhold are all thick, strong, and most of them are so old Grace can barely begin to imagine what they've been through, what they've existed through. She shuts her eyes and smiles as the breeze from outside stirs her hair, breathes deep, smelling the pine and churned earth and wet grass. Mountain air. The best.

“Finally. Peace... and quiet.”

 

 

…

 

 

She sometimes wishes she had Cole's powers—or, rather, what's left of them.

He can still pick up on feelings, emotions, latent memories and their meaning to others. He's still swift and quiet, limber, tall as ever ( _ridiculously_ tall), wicked with daggers—wicked with his hands in general, she thinks before she catches herself and blinks in surprise at her own train of thought. _That's_ new. She has to admit that she sometimes wonders what it'd feel like to hold hands with him. Not out of panic or misery or during times when she needs the comfort—just... holding hands. For no real reason. To be able to map every dip and callus of the palm against hers. He's always warm. She's always cold. That'll be a good excuse to use in the future, then.

He's sitting by her, cross-legged, back leaned against the door of the bog unicorn's stall, worrying at a small block of wood with a carving knife. A shape is beginning to emerge from it, though she can't tell what it is yet. He must have learned more about woodwork from Blackwall. A smile curls the edge of her mouth. She wants to tell him it looks good, but before she has the chance to start doing so, something stiflingly heavy bowls into her from the side, completely knocking her over, flinging the book she was reading aside, and sending tufts of the hay surrounding them flying.

“Comet!” Grace admonishes as the mabari places two gigantic paws on her chest. “Comet!”

The pup's not old enough for her weight to be crushing—yet—but what she doesn't have in size she makes up for in enthusiasm. She can hardly sit still for more than a minute, and that's being very generous. She was a gift—kind of. From the camp of the Blades of Hessarian at the Storm Coast. She'd been standing in the last locked pen in a corner of the camp, paying attention with the typical, intelligent, bright-eyed curiosity characteristic of the mabari stock. What's the Fereldan saying? _The mabari is clever enough to speak, and wise enough to know not to._

She'd been the only mabari left amidst the carnage, the only animal in the camp that hadn't attacked them on sight. Cassandra had cautioned her fiercely against opening the cage, but the pup's reaction to her lifting the gate was nothing hostile. Comet is a beautiful specimen of the breed—pretty in a blue-black coat, speckled with grey, robust in build, with paws too big for puppyhood, all flop and fuzz. She'd followed them right back to camp, trailing after Grace like a shadow in the wake of a cloud—albeit a very loud one that is now licking _every available inch of her face_.

“Comet!” Grace splutters for a last time before the pup slides away. Comet stares at her, tongue lolling happily, blinking at her with those strange pale eyes. Almost the colors of lilacs, they are. Grace sits up, wiping at her face with a sleeve.

“She likes you,” Cole offers helpfully.

“Yes, I'm glad,” she says with a grin. “Though I could do without the fish-breath.”

Comet does that infuriatingly adorable thing where she tilts her head at you and whines questioningly.

“Oh, don't make that sound, it's heartbreaking,” Grace complains, dragging herself across the floor to bridge the gap between her and Comet, reaching up to the dog's brow to scratch at the burst of white fur that gave Comet her name.

The pup sighs contentedly, the tone of it almost human, tail wagging. Well, to be accurate, _butt_ wagging. She uses so much energy to do so that she ends up wiggling nearly her entire midsection. It's really rather cute.

“You love this, don't you?” Grace asks as she moves the scratching to the base of Comet's ears. The response she gets is a bump from Comet's snout, a speedy, perfunctory lick, and a last nuzzle, before Comet turns in the direction of the way she came and bolts away.

“She's growing,” Cole observes, and she nods, trying vainly to straighten the disheveled tousle of her hair.

“ _Fast_ ,” Grace emphasizes while she rubs at the sore spots on her chest. “She must have gained two-stone in the last week alone. Ow...”

Grace makes her way back to her original seat, fishing her book out from under a ball of hay.

“Your hair.”

“My hair?” Grace says faintly, because he's put away the wood and the knife and is shuffling nearer, fingers reaching toward her.

He touches her gently, knuckles combing through her curls, the rasp of his leather gloves warm on her cheek. She's too focused on the intent look in his eyes to notice what he's holding until long after he's pulled it out of the mass of her loose ponytail. Clasped between his fingers is a long twig, the kind you sometimes find in bushels of the packed stuff they feed to horses and beasts of burden.

“Oh,” is all she can say.

Cole gazes at her for a moment. “Sorry,” he blurts, dropping the twig. “I should have—”

“No, it's alright,” she tells him, staring down at the book in her lap.

 _Thedosian Flora, Volume IX,_ by an Enchanter Ines Arancia. It's good reading, not dry, like you'd expect from a book this thick. The author's constant and utter disdain for just about everything outside the world of herbs makes it funnier than it should be. _The astute and learned reader,_ one passage had said, _should be able to tell the difference between the Nevarran snowflower and its cousin, the Escathnian whiteweed. The astute and learned reader, in addition, should be able to remember one is a powerful hallucinogen, and the other an important healing agent in many potions. Check before you brew._

If only dealing with people were as easy as dealing with herbs. She gulps and compulsively tucks away a strand of her hair behind her ear. Tracks the movement of the sunlight on the cobbles below them. Glances up at Cole. Goodness, he's still looking at her, patiently watching from under the flappy rim of his too-large hat. Warmth blooms in her cheeks.

“That was sweet of you,” she murmurs.

“I... it could have hurt you, so I wanted—to... I wanted to help.”

The shock of warmth in her face travels down to her heart, spreading to her fingers and toes. What is this? He's said that to her a million times, maybe more, but this time, it's different. She knows it is. Perhaps not _why,_ or perhaps she's not really prepared to admit why. He is Cole, kind, curious, caring Cole, and she loves him, loves him so much that now that the feeling inside her has a name— _love—_ she feels ready to burst with it. Can a person die of love? Is it possible?

She doesn't know what possesses her to do what she does, but for whatever reason, she props herself up on her knees, the canvas cover of _Thedosian Flora_ rough between her hands, and ever so shyly presses her lips to the freckle on his right cheek. She noticed that small speckle months ago, when they first met. His skin is soft, and he smells of linen and soap and plums. When she backs away, and the full gravity of what she just did crashes down upon her, she leaps to her feet, their soles slapping against the stone.

“I'm sorry!” she exclaims, but it comes out in a tangled jumble of syllables. She's never going to stop being embarrassed. Oh, Maker, what did she—where did that— _no_? “I'm so sorry!”

“It's alright,” he says, echoing the words she'd spoken to him moments earlier.

He tips his hat back to better look up at her, and after a few seconds she decides she cannot stand the lovely cornflower blue of his earnest eyes, and imitates—if a tad less elegantly—Comet's exit. She nearly headbutts Master Dennet on her way out, spewing at him the same babbling apologies before she takes off full tilt, making for the Undercroft.

While Comet barks and tears after the Inquisitor, jovial at the sight of her favorite human running so very fast, Cole, back in the stables, forgets the knife and wood at his side, and, instead, raises a hand to cover the spot on his face that suddenly seems far more precious than anything else in or on his body right this second.

_She..._

 

 

…

 

Only three weeks after the ascension of Divine Victoria, a pair of men enter the abandoned shell of the White Spire, leading a wheelbarrow before them.

A renovation will commence in the next month—the new Divine, is dedicated to rebuilding the pillars of Thedosian society, better, ever better, to make the land a place of education and prestige where no mage will be ashamed to count themselves in the number of their fellows. The two men, however, have been sent ahead of the bustle of workers that will be arriving, and when their task is done, they load up their carriage and return to Val Royeaux, not thinking much of the job they'd just completed. While one of them cleaned the site and placed the odd flowers they found there in a vase ( _“Please do not take them_ ,” their employer's letter had said, “ _for I will know if you do_.”); the other dug a track large enough to sink the tombstone's base into.

It's of wonderful craftsmanship, white marble, commissioned in Val Chevin, the carving done by one of the best stonemasons the city has seen in the last Age, though the decorations are simple: daffodils, apple blossoms, a garland of marigolds. The inscription is clean, hewn deep into the stone, the face of each printed letter crisp and plain.

 

 

COLE;  
WE REMEMBER.  
THANK YOU.

 

…

 


End file.
